Parenting pays off

Today’s guest picture comes from camera club member Simon.  He lives in Canonbie and took a walk to visit the old railway bridge over the Esk below the village.  He sent me this picture to add to my bridge collection.

I followed doctor’s instructions to have a quiet day in again today, and the pain that such slightly boring activity brought was alleviated by the fact that it was a dull, windy, grey day outside in the morning and it got worse and wetter in the afternoon. I wasn’t missing much.

My brain is not quite at its peak so I spent some time making bread twice. The first time was a complete failure because I think that I didn’t make sure the the paddle in the bread maker was securely in position and I ended up with a very curious but definitely dead concoction.  The second effort was more successful.

I made some soup for lunch which worked at the first time of asking.

There weren’t a lot of birds about today but a couple of siskins did appear on the feeder…

…although the light was so poor that I couldn’t take a good picture of them.

Our garden residents put in an appearance, with a dunnock…

…and a blackbird on the tray…

…and the robin on a hedge.

A dunnock kindly tried some trampolining to keep me entertained…

…but mostly I kept myself occupied by doing some Langholm Archive work.  I put a couple of weeks of the Eskdale and Liddesdale Advertiser index into the database and tried to make some progress with my PHP problems.

Reading the manual made my head hurt so I phoned up our younger son and called for help.  He is a computer programmer to trade and had written a lot of the original code for the affected pages.  He generously offered to help and at the time of writing the repairs are going well and most of the repair work has been done.  Mrs Tootlepedal is going to make a sticky toffee pudding to take up as a reward tomorrow.

In the evening a friend came round for a little singing practice and I demonstrated breathing techniques with such enthusiasm that I had another dizzy spell and alarmed her considerably.  You might think that I should be old enough to be sensible but you would be wrong.

However, I recovered after a few minutes and was able to eat the excellent evening meal which Mrs Tootlepedal had provided.  As it involved bubble and squeak, I was pleased not to have missed it.

I am going to have another very quiet day tomorrow with light breathing only.  It is going to be wet and windy again which will help.

A siskin is trying to see where the flying bird of the day went.  I didn’t see it either.

 

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A day of rust

Today’s guest picture is another from my brother’s visit to Hull  yesterday.  As well as Roman bakers, he saw Hull Minster.

We had another dry day here today, cool and cloudy in the morning but (very) warm and sunny in the afternoon.

I inspected the flowers after breakfast.  Mrs Tootlepedal doesn’t think that I have done justice to the back door clematis yet so I had another go.  It is terrific.

That one stem should produce so many flowers is a wonder.

However, Mrs Tootlepedal’s favourite flower of the moment is this elegant iris.

 

I like the Rosa Moyesii which has done very well this year with bigger flowers than usual.

Mrs Tootlepedal  bought this meconopsis at the Buccleuch Centre pant sale last week and it is settling in well.

I had hoped to get a good long cycle ride in today but I got a call to go and see the doctor who had had a look at my recent blood test results so I had to  leave the garden and  see what she had to say.

It turns out that my blood iron level is very low so she gave me me a small iron girder* to nibble on to get my levels back up.   This may explain why I have been finding it quite hard to get the energy up to go cycling lately.  Once I am going, all is well but I have been struggling a bit actually to get on my bike in the first place so it was pleasing to discover that there may be a good excuse for this rather than just natural laziness and old age.

When I got back home, Mrs Tootlepedal was busy in the garden and we went in to have a coffee and read the newspaper. Our peace was disturbed by some very excited calling from blackbirds so we went out to investigate.

There was an extremely vocal female blackbird on the fence behind the greenhouse…

Other birds were agitated too so I was walking  round behind the greenhouse to see if there was a cat among the pigeons so to speak when my eye was caught by a slight movement in the green house itself.

No wonder the blackbirds were agitated.  There was a sparrowhawk in the greenhouse and it was getting pretty agitated itself.

Mrs Tootlepedal opened the greenhouse doors fully and she went round one side and I went round the other and the sparrowhawk took the hint and flew safely out and away.

The blackbirds calmed down.

I took a picture of one of the nice effects of Mrs Tootlepedal’s planting…

…and went back inside from where I watched more peaceful bird scenes.

We had visits from jackdaws…

…a dunnock…

…siskins and redpolls…

…and a pigeon in the plum tree.

Some sparrows tried to get a fight started but it quickly fizzled out.

After lunch, I went out to check on the bees in the garden.  There were plenty about today, both honey and bumble.

Then I got into my my cycling shorts and was ready to go for a ride when I was interrupted again by more heart-rending alarm calls from blackbirds.  I went out to investigate.  This time it was a pair….

…who were constantly flitting about and calling.  We couldn’t find out what the trouble was as there was no hawk or cat in sight.  We had seen a youngster earlier in the day and we wondered in the end whether it had been taken by a predator and the parents were distressed.  It was a mystery.

In the end, I left them to their crying and went off for a short trip round my twenty mile Canonbie circuit.  I passed the first a few of these in a soggy verge…

…and I think, though I am not sure, that it may be a marsh thistle (I would be happy to be corrected).

Nearby among the grasses, there was a lot of this red plant…

…which Mrs Tootlepedal tells me is some kind of dock.  Between the two plants, the verge was very cheerful there.

Further on I stopped to admire the relaxed attitude of some local worthies…

…and then didn’t stop again until I came to Skippers Bridge, where I found the old distillery looking very handsome.

Once home, I mowed the drying green and the greenhouse grass and did some watering in the vegetable garden.  There is no rain in the forecast for several days as the jet stream continues to snake round the top of the British Isles, keeping the fine weather trapped over Scotland.  This means that quite a bit of watering will be on the menu  if the garden is to continue to do well.

In the evening, Mrs Tootlepedal went off to sing with a small choir that our church organist, Henry is getting up for the summer and I obeyed the doctor’s orders and gave my singing voice a rest. The doctor has told me not to sing for two weeks and see what happens.  If my throat is no better then, further investigation will take place.

The flying bird of the day is a siskin…

…and the flower of the day is a front door clematis.

*The iron girder came in handy pill form.

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A pedal and a tootle and lawn care – a perfect day

Today’s guest picture  comes from my brother Andrew who is working his way back south after his visit to Langholm.  He took this picture of Morecambe Bay in the distance from the wonderfully named Hutton Roof.  By the time he got down to the seaside, the tide was out.

Our spell of excellent weather continued and it now feels as though we have had more good days this year already than we had in the whole of last year. Long may it go on.

My throat was still strangely creaky (but with no other ill effects) so I pottered about in the morning, looking at young birds….

Dad looks a little fed up with the incessant demands of the big baby.

A fluffy dunnock looked a bit unhappy….

…until it found a more secure place to rest.

…as well as supervising the hard working Mrs Tootlepedal, sieving a little compost and mowing the middle lawn.

And looking at some small flowers.

Mrs Tootlepedal gave the lithodora a severe haircut the other day but it seems to be thriving on this rough treatment…

…and along with the more showy flowers on the back path, there are some nice clumps of sweet woodruff.

There were some grown up birds in the garden too.

Rooks are handsome birds.

Mrs Tootlepedal edged the lawn after I had mowed it and I took a picture in the late afternoon to show the effect that all this care had.

I made some carrot and lentil soup for lunch and then, after a restful moment or two, I got the new bike out and went round my standard 20 mile Canonbie circuit.

I did stop for photos today and after taking a picture of the road that climbs out of the Wauchope valley…

…a pattern developed:

A tree

Some cows posing

Some trees

A cow posing

Lots of trees.  The Esk is fully clothed at the Hollows now.

The pattern was interrupted when I stopped off at Irvine House in an effort to capture some orange tip butterfly pictures.  I succeeded after a fashion…

Female on left, male on right

…but I would have needed to spend a lot more time to get good shots as the butterflies were in a flighty mood.

There was time for another walk round the garden when I got home.

Mrs Tootlepedal’s greenhouse is full of plants waiting to go out….

…but there are quite a lot already in place in the vegetable garden with individual greenhouses.

You may have heard of bottle green.  These are green bottles.

The drumstick primula in front of the pond was looking lovely.

…and it is hard to pass the rhododendrons without the shutter finger twitching.

In the evening, Susan arrived and gave me a lift to Carlisle where we enjoyed a very entertaining evening of recorder playing with our group.  As an added bonus, we were treated to a very elegant new moon in the sky as we drove back.  Sadly, it was behind the hill by the time that we got home.

Although not a flying bird, the most interesting animal we saw all day was this amazing pig  in our neighbour Liz’s garden.

It was having a rest on a journey from Corby to Aberdeen.

The actual flying bird of the day is a greenfinch leaving the feeder in a hurry when Mrs Tootlepedal went out to shut up the greenhouse for the night.

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